For All of Us
by TheWickedWitchOfOz
Summary: Response to LJ prompt. Post Musical. Glinda visits the Chapel of her namesake. Onesided GlindaElphie if you squint.


Disclaimer: Anything to do with Wicked/Wizard of Oz not mine.

AN: in this musicalverse 'The Mythical Sea' is an Ozian euphemism for death.

**For All of Us**

Two years had passed since the triumphant return of the Witch Hunters, the leave-taking of the Wizard, the arrest of Madame Morrible, and the ascension of Glinda the Good to the position of Regent of Oz.

Two years to the day since the deaths of her fiancé and her closest friend.

It had taken that long to bring some semblance of order to the Land of Oz in the wake of those events and now Glinda was finally able to visit home. She spent a few days with her family before confiding to her brother, who was the ruler of Gillikin, that she wished to make an unaccompanied visit the Chapel of Saint Glinda.

The Chapel was one of the most beautiful buildings in Gillikin, people came from all over Oz to see it. Glinda had always loved the structure of the building, it had a domed roof supported by four pillars and from the outside it looked like the walls were made of pieces of stone all joined together in particular way but the inside!

Inside it was like standing inside a rainbow. The windows were made of stained glass set in patterns and the architects of the long gone days who had created the Chapel (such a magnificent building could not be merely built) had set up a system of mirrors that somehow reflected the light from outside and filled the circular room with all the colours of the glass windows, even at night as long as the moon was bright.

Night was when Glinda chose to go there, it had always been the time she liked best, the building was empty and the colours were somehow different. Nighttime made the bright colours welcoming, warm, safe, like being surrounded by all of the love in the world.

Nighttime now was the loneliest time for her, the time when she cried, the time when she felt guilty, the time when she could not forget. Now, finally, she was able to take the time to come North, without feeling like she was abandoning her duties.

Over one arm she carried a basket, like a common maid her mother had said before she left, Glinda had been unmoved by her mother's protests and insisted on entering the building alone though she did give in enough to have her brother escort her to the beginning of the path.

Only her brother knew that she did come here for the usual reason but for a special ceremony, one rarely used by the Gillikinese people in these modern times. A ceremony of atonement in which the person wrote down what they considered their crimes to be, lit a candle for the victim, then burned the paper in the Saint's Sacred Fire – it was said that, if a person truly repented, the ceremony would cleanse their soul of the guilt.

Glinda lit four candles, placing them all reverently on the Saint's Altar, and picked up the much crumpled and ink stained parchment she had written her confession on.

_For Boq, who believes himself heartless, trapped in a body no magic left in Oz can repair because of my actions as a foolish girl of twenty. He forgives me but I cannot forgive myself. _

_For Nessa who took the first steps on the path of wickedness thanks to those same actions, who died for my jealousy and false feelings of betrayal. I wish her peace in the world beyond. _

_For Fiyero because I never truly loved him, only what he was, and should have set him free to love where he wanted. I never had his heart and he never had mine, I regret that we did not admit this to each other sooner. _

_For Elphaba because…_

Here the page was marred by a large inkblot as Glinda had held her hand above the paper, not knowing what to say.

_I judged her without knowing her, I was cruel to her without reason, I blamed her for leaving me behind when I chose not to follow her, I listened without protest when her name was reviled, I jumped to conclusions when Fiyero left, blamed her things I know in my heart she would not have done, I promised never to clear her name, and I let her die when I could have saved her. _

Here another pause, another inkblot, as Glinda paused to decide if what she wanted to write next was rightly part of the ceremony but she was reminded that the Keeper of the Shrine of Saint Glinda, in the Emerald City, had told her that it was what was in her heart as she wrote that mattered. So she finished the page with:

_I'm sorry I waited so long to tell her how much she meant to me, I'm sorry I didn't have time to tell her everything knowing her has done for me, I'm sorry I promised that I wouldn't tell the world what she tried to do for all of us, I'm sorry they'll never know her the way I did, and (it's selfish of me to think of myself) I'm sorry she will never know how much I've grown up since she left. Most of all I'm sorry that I will never be able to tell her how much I loved her._

Leaving the candles Glinda, crying, took the page to the open fire and held it until the flames, feeling the warmth and light of the room surround her. As the paper vanished into ashes she felt the soul rending pain she'd suffered all this time fade away, it still hurt to think of those she'd hurt but now it was an ache – like an old scar instead of an open wound – and she found she could bear it well enough to allow herself good memories as well as those that filled her with remorse.

Later in her life as the Sorceress-Queen of Oz, married and a mother, there was never a person that she cared for as she had Elphaba Thropp. That was not to say they she did not love her country or her husband and family but, as the Quadlings said, there were many kinds of love in the world.

Finally, so long after her visit to the Chapel (which still stood) that only she and Boq remembered that the Witch had once had a name, came the night that plunged all of Oz into mourning for a year: Glinda the Good died.

And Glinda found the truth in the inscription Elphaba had left in the Grimmerie as a final farewell so many years ago.

_True friendship is as rare a gift as love, like love can never be forgotten.  
True friends can always be found beyond the Mythical Sea._


End file.
